NYT Campaign Stops: Culture Warriors Don’t Win

OP-EDS & REVIEWS Culture Warriors Don’t Win By Gil Troy, NYT, 4-27-12 Associated Press Ronald Reagan campaigning for governor on Nov. 5, 1966 in Hawthorne, Calif. Mitt Romney’s apparent nomination proves that Republican voters are more pragmatic and centrist than their reputation suggests. The Republican candidates this year fought a classic political battle. Rick Santorum, [...]

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Mitt Romney Channels Dan Quayle as Gaffemeister

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, HNN, 2-4-12 Everyone’s having a grand old time mocking Mitt Romney for finally “admitting”: “I’m not very concerned about the very poor.” The quotation has been bandied about as proof that Romney is a greedy, unfeeling capitalist. And, in a presidential campaign which emphasizes optics over good sense, Romney [...]

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A Referendum on the Republican Party — Not Just its Leaders

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, HNN, 1-19-12 After months of debating, fundraising, positioning, posturing, and polling, America’s Republican candidates are finally facing the voters – with Election Day still nearly ten months away. As always, there is much to mock. But despite its flaws, America’s electoral system is working, managing a complicated, intense, continent-wide [...]

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Bring It On: Early Attacks on Romney’s Bain Capital Record May Inoculate Him Against Democratic Attacks

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, HNN, 1-12-12 A crisis is looming for political reporters desperate for a drawn out, dramatic presidential campaign.  Republican voters may be less crazy and more predictable than the conventional wisdom suggests.  If Mitt Romney continues his winning streak because Republicans realize he is the most electable candidate, we might [...]

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NYT Campaign Stops: Not Set in Granite

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, New York Times, 1-10-12 Right now, while we indulge New Hampshire’s childish insistence on its presidential primary being “first in the nation,” Americans should decide to bury this tradition. Nearly a century is enough: the Granite State has somehow turned a fluke into an entitlement. Worse, its obsession with [...]

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Relaunching this Blog: Fed up with the Iowa Corn Con

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, HNN, 1-5-12 Mitt Romney’s margin of eight votes highlights just how small and unrepresentative the sample at the Iowa caucus is – -and how marginal that exercise should be. My third grade class presidency was decided with a larger margin. And, once again, the state that made Pat Robertson [...]

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NYT Campaign Stops: Can We Get Serious?

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, NYT, 12-2-11 To select someone worthy of sitting in George Washington’s chair, sleeping in Abraham Lincoln’s bed and governing from Franklin Roosevelt’s desk, Americans crave a substantial presidential campaign, as long as they don’t have to endure too many boring speeches. Like every human decision-making process, presidential campaigns seesaw [...]

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Mark Halpern’s Potty Mouth in Perspective: from the Bully Pulpit to the Public Toilet

OP-EDS & REVIEWS By Gil Troy, 6-30-11 On December 23, 1796, right after George Washington published his Farewell Address to the nation, the caustic editor Benjamin Franklin Bache, Benjamin Franklin’s grandson, published his farewell to America’s first president.  “If ever a nation was debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by Washington,” [...]

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Michael Jackson: The King of Pop Made His Mark

How Jackson healed America Performer used his celebrity to blur the lines between black and white By Gil Troy, History News Network, 6-25-09 – Montreal Gazette, 6-27-09 Michael Jackson’s death at age 50 parallels Elvis Presley’s death in 1977, at age 43. By the time both performers died, they were walking punch lines, symbols of [...]

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Obama’s Inaugural Competition: His Predecessors and His own Eloquence

By Gil Troy, HNN, 1-18-09 Americans love a good speech and particularly a great inaugural address. As Barack Obama prepares for his inauguration, the stakes are particularly high. He is competing with ghosts of eloquent presidents past along with his own high rhetorical standards. He is taking office as the country’s first black president, healing [...]

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